


count one through ten, begin again

by cicadas



Series: pater noster [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Isolation, diego has his powers from the comics, training? read: experiments on vulnerable children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 05:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20829809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicadas/pseuds/cicadas
Summary: Diego dreaded endurance sessions more than anything.





	count one through ten, begin again

The water was always cold.

Cold, fizzing, salty. Chemical-filled like no other pool or bath he'd encountered on his trips outside. Diego stepped into it unwillingly. His body tensed up with the memory of what happened last time.

One foot in front of the other. Thick droplets accumulated and fell at the rim of the circular pool, dropping back into the water soundlessly. Diego watched his breath turn to steam in front of him as he stepped down each rung of the ladder. Deeper and deeper, until the water bubbled along his skin, attaching itself to him. Seeping into his pores. Diego felt sick.

The clock on the ceiling told him it was two p.m. Stared down at him - another unfriendly face.

"Number Two," A warning.

Diego jumped down the last rungs and immersed himself in the water. If he had his hair, still, it would be floating to the top, swirling around like seaweed, but it had been shaved a week prior to ensure maximum efficiency.

If he were a swimmer, that would make sense. Diego only floated, held down by his ankles with restraints that always bruised. The weights were getting heavier and heavier the bigger he grew - they had doubled since he was twelve, and the training pool had grown with him. Minor adjustments here and there, deeper pit dug into the earth, thicker walls, temperature gauges, the metal cover that would slide across once he was strapped in—

"Number Two, attach the straps to both ankles." His father's voice was nothing but an echo from the underwater speakers. It carried as much threat as his eyes staring daggers into him would have. A hand clamped around his wrist and his voice steadily raising.

Diego surfaced to take one last breath, sucking it deep down into his lungs to feel it stretch out his insides. He kept his eyes shut so he wouldn't have to see the room he was in, breathing in more, bit by bit, until he could practically feel his lungs pressed up against his ribcage. Then he ducked his head under, and swam to the bottom.

The restraints in his hands were like holding something dead. He wanted to drop them, scream at them, never have to touch or look in their direction again. It was a strange feat of his psyche that he used his own hands to strap one around the sharp bone of his left ankle, then the right. Once the metal lock clicked into each latch, he felt them tighten automatically, the sensors inside scoping out how tight they could clinch before they dug too harshly into soft skin.

They'd read his vitals - blood pressure, oxygen level, heart rate - and send them to a machine to write out with an automated pen and print out the other side. He'd seen it before; the paper piled up in one long, continuous spool on the floor.

His father hadn't been there to read it the entire time he was under.

Diego's breath was a living thing inside his lungs. It clawed at him, wanting to be released back to the surface of the pool where it'd dissipate from small contained bubbles into the atmosphere. Diego brought a hand up to his face to pinch his nose.

He knew what he could do, but it didn't make it any easier under pressure.

The weighted wetsuit vest pushed his shoulders down, pulled at his body and kept it rigid. The metal clamps around his ankles ensured he wouldn't be able to swim to the surface. The information being sent through those same clamps would tell his father exactly what was happening to his body without him having to get his feet wet.

Diego spent most of his time underwater shivering.

It took it out of him the fastest, the cold. His body fought to bring as much heat from his blood to his extremities, pushing it though his skin to be absorbed by the cold around him. Sucking his energy out and leeching itself in through his pores. His heartbeat clattered loudly against his bones and in his ears.

Focus, breathe- no, no, no.

Diego clamped his lips shut tighter. Ground his molars against each other until his jaw ached.  The urge would pass, he knew.  Breathing was a habit, not a necessity. Holding his breath under here, with no way to surface if he should give in to the temptation to open his mouth and inhale-  Well, that was a necessity.

The speakers underwater warbled the sound of his father's voice as it came to life around him.

"You are struggling too much. If your pulse raises any higher we will need to restart with a regular BPM. Focus, Number Two."  The sound of the microphone switching off was a distinct click that resounded in his head louder than the threat of having to start over.

Diego held onto it. Counted one, two, three...

His heart rate began to slow - he could hear it banging on his eardrums under the pressure of the cold, chemical water - the longer he focused on the words in his head. Pictured them in his mind.

The oxygen he held in his lungs had since been absorbed into his bloodstream, recycled and reused over and over in a way no other body could do. Focus.

Diego heard the groaning of metal coming from above, faint but horribly distinct. He panicked.

_ No, no! _

He couldn't open his mouth to scream or he'd drown. He couldn't be locked in the dark again.

_ Stop it! Leave it open! I hate being trapped, I can't do this, I'll die in here! _

He parted his lips, and the acrid taste of chlorine and salt and something so horribly bitter flooded over his tongue. He wanted to spit it out immediately, but had no means to. Diego swallowed, and the burning taste chased its way down his throat as he did so. He could never tell if he was crying, underwater.

Above his head, the thick metal lid kept moving, mechanically sliding into place to keep him inside, locking and setting with a final groan of plate on coated plate.

Stuck, he thought.

His lungs began to burn again. The restraints around his ankles seemed tighter than ever before - impossible to break out of if he tried. And he had tried, more than once, only to swim up and meet with a thick barrier above, blocking him from the outside world. It was so close to the water he could barely press his lips up to the steel to attempt to suck whatever air might be caught inside before water flooded his mouth, causing him to swallow instinctively. It had sat in his throat, burning down his stomach for nearly a minute before his father hit the button that would move the lid, releasing him to cough wet and full-bodied over the side of the pool.

His stutter had come back after that - whatever chemicals were in that water were not meant for human consumption, and Diego had swallowed several gulps of it. He wasn't sure whether it was the sores on his mouth or pure anxiety that reverted all progress he'd made with Mom, sending him back to the mirror to visualise his words. All he saw was the dark of the water around him, lit up only by the red lights of the cameras fitted into the pool walls.

Diego thrashed his head. He couldn't do this. He hated the dark. He wanted out, out, _out._

"Number Two, focus!"

Diego knew he could stay underwater until his skin peeled and his stomach acid started eating away at himself. He knew he could keep his mouth closed and not take another breath indefinitely. He knew what he was capable of, but he couldn't. When he was emotional or angry or scared, things built up and up until he just had to break to the surface and breathe.

In and out, like Mom talked him through on particularly bad nights.

He couldn't do that in here. He had to be still and find a way around it. He was stuck, and there was nobody around to comfort him. The plastic-protected holes of the speakers surrounding him went without saying.

He stayed suspended in limbo for hours. With the lid closed over his head, he couldn't see the time, and there was no way of telling in the dark. His skin, having grown numb within the first few minutes, prickled at any point of contact. The vest rubbed his skin raw despite its soft material, pressing in on his chest. It seemed to grow heavier the more time passed, and Diego wondered if he would eventually sink to the bottom.

It was like a liminal space - a pause on time and place, with only him to witness it. The clawing in his organs had died down, leaving only a faint tickle that grew uncomfortable whenever he thought about it. So he didn't think about it.

He thought about his bedroom, and the posters on his walls; both the ones he'd chosen and the ones his father had hung for him. Drawings done by Ben of the creatures inside him, his attempt to humanise them, or simply come to terms with their existence. His bed with the sheets kicked up and over the end frame, knives tucked securely in the case underneath, dirty socks and uniform shorts left on the carpet from when he last changed. He should've picked those up for Mom.

Diego's eyes opened inside the blue-tinted goggles.

_Mom._

He could hear her in his head, feel her kissing his head, spiky with re-growing hair, soothing him after 'training' when the reality of finally being free to move again became all too much and he would break down in the bathroom, or the hall, or in the kitchen trying to smuggle a late-night snack. She seemed to know to seek him out whenever he needed her without him so much as making a sound. He was never so good at asking for help, even more so when it came to things like his own feelings.

Mom understood, though.

He pulled his arms down from where they floated limply in the water, elbows up to ear-height, fingers curled in towards his palms like they did when he slept. Through the faint sting of chemicals in his skin and pounding in his chest, he focused on the sound of her voice.

It echoed throughout the pool that threatened to drown him if he didn't concentrate - the urge to breathe while in a foreign atmosphere was purely psychological, he'd been told - and settled in his ribcage, warm and dry, like nothing else about him.

_One, two, three, four..._

His eyes slipped back closed.

_Five, six, seven, eight..._

His heart beat slower, steadily finding equilibrium in the newly relaxed state of his muscles and the lack of racing thoughts to kickstart it back into overdrive.

_Nine, ten._

Diego let his arms float back up to rest in place above his head, reaching for the ground above. He stayed like that for minutes, enough to be considered _calm_, when-

"Very good, Number Two."

The sound of his father's voice cut through the silence with an ear-bursting crackle. Diego's eyes shot open to encounter the black nothing of his surroundings once more.

"Your body is functioning perfectly despite the prolonged deprivation of atmospheric oxygen. You will notice the water may sting a bit more than your last session - I had to decrease the PH to be more acidic to ensure you were not absorbing oxygen via the water, as an amphibian might. An outlandish thought, perhaps, but every facet must be trialled and tested, must it not?" His father laughed. It sent a shiver under Diego's skin.

He couldn't speak, but he knew he was being watched, so he nodded once to show he understood.

"As I said, very good. We will continue through to tomorrow's appointed training time. This state of body is quite befitting for comparative results."

Diego's brain spun._ What does that mean? Dad, what does that mean?_

"I will return at two p.m. In the meantime, remain as you are for accurate readings. Until then, Number Two."

Two p.m.

Twelve hours.

Diego kicked his feet, lashing out against the chains, but they stayed put, never letting him move more than an inch side to side. He watched the lights of the cameras blink once, twice, then go dark.

Whatever calm had settled over him previously was _gone._ Diego's shattered knowledge of time was brought back full force with the knowing he'd be underwater - in this pit, stinging and scraping at his body, pushing him down, keeping him under - for half a day.

He hadn't been told how long he'd already spent below, but he knew from experience minutes could stretch into hours with only seconds having passed.

Twelve hours.

_One, two, three— Let me out, let me out, let me out— four, five, six—I can't breathe, I need to breathe, I can't_—_ _

Diego opened his mouth to shout.  The water came flooding in.

He woke in the med bay, one room across from the pool he knew was waiting for him as soon as he was patched up and functional. Mom held a needle in her left hand, poised daintily beside her head as if she were modelling it. Her face was pulled into a frown. Beside her, stepped shy out of the bright lights that made her so clear, his father gave a nod.

Mom stepped closer.

Diego blanched. "Mom, not again. Not again, I hate them."

Dad narrowed his eyes, and Diego's jaw snapped shut. Talking out of turn was not allowed, and he really didn't want to be punished; His body felt like he'd been asleep for days, but his mind was groggy and half-alert like he'd done the opposite. Everything was blurry and stilted, with the beginnings of what he knew as a migraine building in his skull. What's worse was the buzzing panic building in his chest, growing higher and faster every second.

The lingering fear was kickstarted by the sight of the needle in his Mom's hand. His heart rate picked up, beating against his aching ribs until it the overpowering urge to hyperventilate took hold and he bent forward, sitting upright in the bed to grip at his bare chest.

"Grace, do it now."

Diego shook his head. He was dizzy and confused and scared. He wanted a hug. He wanted his Dad to stop _staring_.

"P-p-puh—" Picture the word, picture the word, "Please, I'm calm."

He wasn't. It didn't matter. Mom moved forward, quick and efficient, aiming the needle to his upper arm. The mere threat of it had Diego falling back onto the bed before the sedative could even take hold. He didn't feel the pinch, or the sting, or the band-aid Mom carefully placed over the puncture. He just felt sleepy. Complacent.

"Number Two. Bed, now." His father ordered.

Diego went. The stinging taste in his mouth and throat went with him.


End file.
